


Falsehood of Thee I could suppose

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Female Friendship, Gen, Humor, Pop Culture, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-17 11:47:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9322214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: "There must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no." Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead





	1. Chapter 1

“I’ll go to the reception with you, I can pretend to be your boyfriend,” Jed announced cheerfully. Emma had been hurrying to finish her cooling cup of coffee before her next procedure and choked and sputtered but did not actually spit the over-priced, overly sweet latte all over Mary’s charts and the journal article Mary had been absently over-highlighting while they chatted about the conference coming up.

“What? Christ, no. Jed, no. Just no,” Mary said, shaking her head. His expression changed only slightly, to cheerfully, maniacally determined and she knew the battle was already lost.

She really had only herself to blame; no one had **forced** her to talk about the conference, the poster she was presenting, the fact that her ex, a prominent researcher she’d made a point of never before mentioning, was going to be there, on a panel and at the fancy-pants reception you needed an invitation to, an invitation she had been sheepishly excited to receive until she’d looked over the schedule and seen Gus’s name in three or four or what seemed like a million places. She’d briefly considered not going to the reception and sort of nonchalantly avoiding any sessions where she could remotely risk running into Gus, but she’d reminded herself she was a grown-up, an attending physician, and that they’d parted on amicable enough terms to make the possibility of skulking around trying not to see him the bigger embarrassment than any encounter could be. Until Jed proposed being her fake boyfriend. The potential for embarrassment in that scenario could only be expressed asymptotically, proving there was a use for calculus after all.

“No, it’ll be great. I promise. We’ll be there together anyway and I’ll be on my best, fake-boyfriend behavior. And I can be the designated driver,” he wheedled. She’d thought he traded far too heavily on sarcasm when she first met him but found he really was an excellent physician and his patients loved him, so she’d given him the benefit of the doubt about as often as she gave him a piece of her mind, and they generally got along well but his suggestion was frankly ludicrous. If she’d said that out loud, she’d have to quickly add, “Not the rapper” before he could somehow use it against her.

“I don’t even want to know what constitutes your idea of a good fake-boyfriend and the reception is at the hotel we are staying at, no one’s driving anywhere anyway,” Mary retorted. She could see failure barreling toward her at top speed but she couldn’t resist putting up a fight.

“I said ‘best fake-boyfriend,’ Mary, you don’t have to settle. I’ll come to your poster session and ask a good question if no one else does and make sure no randos try to make a move. The reception will be cake. I kill at cocktail parties,” Jed announced. Emma rolled her eyes but Mary knew she liked Jed, just like everyone did, except Byron Hale, who was the living definition of gauche. And feckless. In fact, whatever feck was, Byron Hale had absolutely none of it. So, really, being disliked by him was the equivalent of being adored by someone great. Mary noticed she’d let herself wander away from Jed’s insane proposition and tried to formulate some new argument to stop him when he interrupted her avoidant meandering.

“So what’s the deal with your ex? It’s von Olnhausen, right?” It could have been totally obnoxious because it was nosy and Jed was exceptionally good at being exceptionally obnoxious when he chose but it just wasn’t. Something about the way he asked, a careful neutrality she knew he’d had to work for, coupled with the knowledge that he’d been through a divorce, a fairly unpleasant one reportedly given that there were no kids involved, made the question tolerable.

Emma stood up then, shook off the crumbs of her lunch, said pointedly “I’ll text you later” and tossed her empty latte cup in the garbage before leaving for her one o’clock. There were a few minutes to spare before Mary had to gather up her things and trudge over to clinic, where nothing would be on time and she’d have barely a moment to think about what Gus’s office must look like, how big the window would be and how impressive the view that reflected off the monitor, the long, sleek L-shaped desk, the glowing Hereke rug hanging on the wide wall across from the door. She didn’t really care about her own crappy office, the window that was almost too small to keep a philodendron alive, the 1980s era furniture—she cared, a little more than she should, about having to come face to face with Gus again and about facing up to the fantasy she’d never quite let go of, the one where they stayed together, worked in the same hospital, hosted much-talked about dinner parties and found some hobby to share that wasn’t related to medicine, like running or cooking authentic Moroccan food, laughing over how to make preserved lemon when neither of them liked it. What could she say about him, about them—what could be distilled into a few minutes before an afternoon of getting swamped in clinic, what was honest and yet what could she tell Jed that she wouldn’t regret?

“Nothing very exciting. He’s a very nice person but it didn’t work out. For us. Bad timing, I guess,” she offered. She braced herself for some derisive comment about what she’d said, probably about calling Gus “nice,” but it didn’t come. Jed was quiet, listening and looking at her in a way she usually didn’t let herself acknowledge. He had beautiful dark eyes, darker than Gus’s had been, and sometimes she wondered about him. He was so self-assured and bright, brash whenever he felt like it but she always thought there was something he concealed, a vulnerability he wouldn’t risk. He liked to play Schubert when he operated and Liszt, not the 70s rock that she would have expected and she’d seen him a few times, after he lost a patient, staring somewhere she couldn’t see, his hands white-knuckled in front of him. 

“Sometimes, well, a lot of the time, I think surgery is easier than relationships. At least for me,” he replied slowly, then paused. Mary was torn; this was the most real conversation she could remember having with him and she found she wanted to keep talking, but there was clinic to get to and the setting, the staff lounge where anyone could, probably would, walk in didn’t lend itself to further confidences. She must have let her uncertainty show on her face and he must have been looking, something else to mull over on her commute home, because he spoke again before she could, “But fake relationships, I’m a rock star there. Don’t worry about that. Hakuna matata.”

She laughed then, at the whole thing. The crazy fake-boyfriend set-up, how insistent he was on pursuing it and how he sang his own praises, the idea that she would worry about him failing at being a fake-boyfriend as the deal-breaker. 

“I can see I can’t stop you. I’ve gotta run, I have clinic,” she said. He smiled widely, victorious and handsome, and there was something else—mischief or glee or surprise than she would allow it that was incontrovertibly _there_ but that he’d deny if she asked.

Emma was easier to read— because they were closer friends and because they conducted the whole exchange by text over the course of the synchronized re-watch of an episode of a Downton Christmas special that they both knew by heart.

**U said no after I left**

I _t was pointless_

**WTF, Mary?**

_Em, you know Jed, I wasn’t going to waste my breath_

**Srsly u agreed?**

_I mean, yes. It’ll be all right. Say it’ll be all right. Jed’s not a monster. Or a moron._

**Don’t say I didn’t warn u** [followed by about twelve wagging finger emojis]

_That is not the reassurance I was looking for. It’s not like I said yes to Byron_

**Fine. It’ll be all right (not) What’re u going to wear then?**

That was a question Mary had to think about and ultimately decide via a series of selfies she took in what felt like her entire wardrobe, which she then messaged to Emma for feedback. It was a reception at a conference, so Mary ignored Emma’s pleading for the one shouldered red dress Emma had endorsed with sriracha bottle emojis, and kept resending the same three little black dress variations. Emma couldn’t huff as effectively in a text but Mary knew her friend was put out, so she purposely asked her to recap the last season of “Call the Midwife” and promised, again, to watch it. She then tried, with all her might, to forget about the conference, the panel, Gus and Jed; she was only partially successful, but it was better than nothing. She couldn’t really do much about any of it until the conference anyway, other than what she had expected to do, which was pore over her poster and review articles, so she stuck to her original plan. Mostly.

But not entirely, which was why when Jed came to her hotel room to meet her before the reception, he saw the red dress on the unused double bed and why she didn’t have a snappy comeback ready when he whistled expertly at the sight. She managed not to blush.

“You probably made the right call,” he said, startling her. He’d followed through on his promise and she couldn’t complain about his fake-boyfriend performance over the past two days, even if she had never asked for it. He’d been just the little bit more affectionate in his collegiality in sessions, stood a half-inch closer, let his eyes rest on her in a way that was readily observable and he had asked a very good, actually very interesting question about her poster that she enjoyed answering and which had given her the idea for a possible brilliant research proposal. But this was going to be the real test, tonight, the reception where she’d have to talk to Gus instead of giving him a half-smile at a distance or a little wave she pretended was a knock-off of the Queen’s impartial greeting. Avoiding him tonight wasn’t an option, not if she wanted to retain some sense of being a grown-ass woman, and she hoped Jed could just continue to act like a normal person and not do some over-the-top chick-flick boyfriend impression. She really, really didn’t want to be called “babe,” not even once.

“I mean, that other dress—wow! But it doesn’t exactly scream stuffy conference reception,” he added. He was appropriately dressed in a very expensive grey suit with an unobjectionable silk tie, neat and tidy and she missed the Jed who wore a ratty old fleece vest over his scrubs, perpetually in need of a haircut, with an oversized “I heart my charge nurse” button weighing down his ID lanyard.

“I don’t know why I packed it,” she admitted, pulling the door closed behind her and slipping the key card into the dressy beaded handbag she’d slung over her shoulder. She had imagined it as a mature version of Hermione’s magic bag when she picked it out though she refused to confess that to anyone, even Emma.

“S’good to have options. Can I say— _may_ I say, as your fake-boyfriend, you look great?” he replied, adding “I’m a Method actor,” as if an explanation was required.

“You already did. But thanks. Emma will be glad, she voted for this outfit,” Mary said.

“She has good taste. But it’s not just the dress,” he said. “Or those heels.” They were entering into a weird zone now, which Mary knew was saying a lot because unasked-for-fake-boyfriend-at-professional-conference-where-hugely-successful-ex-is-presenting was already, by definition, a weird zone. This was a statistically significant weirder zone that that; this felt personal and not-fake and she didn’t quite understand why she wasn’t shutting it right down. She could imagine the text advice from Emma in all caps and a zillion exclamation points making smoke emerge from the iPhone’s ports

**SHUT IT DOWN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**

And she was ignoring said advice without letting herself pay attention to what it meant that she liked the compliment and even more, the serious tone he’d used to deliver it, the fact that there was no audience to play to. She liked walking down the carpeted hallway with him towards the elevators and she liked that he was not even bothering to sneak his glances at her. Every minute she didn’t tell him to cut it out was going to be a major problem when they were back at work but she still didn’t.

Nor did she tell him to stop it when he touched her forearm lightly but definitively before walking over the bar to get her a drink, absently telling him “A white. Red gives me a headache,” when she spotted Gus across the room and caught his eye or when Jed had remarked, “Okay, princess” with a wink in response. She let herself hope that he’d make it easier to get through the conversation with Gus, whatever they could come up with after the comfortably easy greeting, the brief kiss on the cheek that had never been part of their actual relationship. She’d been sticking to professional topics, praising Gus’s work, the panel talk, avoiding any questions he asked about her family, how she liked Boston, whether she’d gone to Barcelona after all, but it was hard. She hadn’t expected it to feel so familiar and so foreign to talk to him again. She discovered she didn’t want to look too closely at Gus’s eyes; she didn’t want to see his old interest returned and she could hardly bear to see his polite, bored fatigue. It felt like when a procedure started to go wrong, the anatomy atypical, a vessel nicked, the field obscured; she recognized the growing tension that she used at work to focus herself, her voice similar to when she called clearly and urgently for more gauze or another suture, but here it was only making everything increasingly impossible, each next word coming more slowly.

“Mary, there’s something I’ve wanted to--” Gus said into the silence between them, as ephemeral and present as smoke. She was going to have to look at him, that man she had loved so much and still left, who hadn’t wanted her enough before either, and then she didn’t have to at all, because Jed had come up behind her, a warm hand on her back, bared in the most daring feature of the demure black silk dress, and quickly kissed the side of her neck, murmuring softly “Mmm, you smell so good,” in a tone to be half-understood by her, by Gus, before moving to her side and handing her a glass of wine; he remarked in his normal volume, “Sancerre, they had it, who knew? I thought it was worth taking the chance it would be a good year. Excuse me, Jed Foster, Mass General, nice to meet you,” extending his hand to Gus to shake while she did everything she could not to. 

“Gus von Olnhausen, I’m an…old friend of Mary’s,” Gus replied. Mary focused on the feeling of the wineglass in her hand, the shape of the stem and the difference between the glossiness of the glass’s belly and the sheen of the pale gold wine it held. Jed wasn’t touching her anymore but her skin didn’t seem to know that; she felt his palm open against her spine and the softness of his lips, the tickle of his beard, against her throat.

“Right. You’re still at UCSF? Gorgeous out there and that department is stellar,” Jed said. He sounded entirely untroubled and she noticed he hadn’t bother to define their relationship, more convincing than if he’d uttered the words, “Mary’s boyfriend.” She sipped the dry wine and wondered how he knew she preferred it, if he’d guessed or asked Emma. Method acting, he’d said, and a devoted boyfriend would know his girlfriend’s favorite drink, would know enough to mention it as an aside.

“Until a few months ago. Mayo called and I couldn’t pass it up. I’m reacclimating to winter though. Hadn’t missed that.”

“That’s a shock to the system,” Jed said. “They know how to deal with it out there, though.”

“Yes. I’m getting a lot of invitations to go ice fishing. I suppose I’ll have to try it, I’m going to run out of excuses,” Gus said. If she’d been willing to be the trailing spouse, she’d be the one fielding those calls, agreeing to go “just the once” while he scowled at her behind his laptop. Would she be happier, cobbling together a secondary career, fitting herself in around him? He’d been too far ahead of her, professionally, for it to be otherwise, a post-doc much in demand when she was about to enter med school, already first author on several papers; she could never have caught up, not without him making sacrifices she hadn’t want to ask for and which he’d never offered to make. She knew it was pretend, but having Jed beside her made it easier to admit the doubt and to decide she wasn’t sorry she’d said no those years ago or not sorry enough.

“You’d like it, schatzi. You always liked the cold weather and snow,” Gus remarked.

“If I can move around, yeah. Ice skating or skiing. Just sitting over a hole in the ice doesn’t sound very appealing,” she replied quickly. She hadn’t expected him to use the old nickname. It suggested an intimacy between them that hadn’t existed for years or that he’d like to rekindle it. He’d never been the kind of guy to be concerned with establishing dominance, at work or socially; she didn’t know what to make of his comment, the endearment, but she felt Jed shift closer to her and without thinking, she leaned into him a little, almost touching.

“To the point as ever. One of your best traits, I always thought,” he said, further confusing her. She tried to imagine what he was getting at, what he had planned when he first saw her name in the official schedule. Not this triangle, any chance of suggesting a reunion or nostalgic, rueful reminiscence blocked by Jed, his relaxed smile, his Oscar-worthy performance as Mary’s successful boyfriend. 

“I’d have to agree-- though Mary is so perfectly wonderful, it’s hard to decide,” Jed replied, grinning at her. She batted at his arm with her free hand. Emma would say “I told you so” in about twelve languages when Mary described the scene to her but there was no going back now.

“Jed! Enough, you’re embarrassing me,” she exclaimed. It was true but she thought she sounded like the actress, not a particularly good one, miscast as the smart-talking ingénue. Something changed in Gus’s eyes then and once she would have known exactly what it meant. Once, but not now. Now she knew what it meant that Jed nodded and grazed her hand, the one that she’d hit him with, before she drew it back.

“I’m afraid I have to go. It was so nice to catch up a little, Mary. I’ve missed-- I’m glad to see you happy,” Gus said. He didn’t try to kiss her goodbye, the way he had those years ago when he’d whispered against her mouth “I thought you’d be crying now” or even the way he had said hello to her tonight, just touched her shoulder briefly as he walked by, to some other destination she didn’t bother to identify. She drank the rest of the wine in the glass in one swallow.

“Are you?” Jed asked, turning to he face her. It was his normal voice and she thought he’d dropped the fake-boyfriend thing for the moment. He seemed curious and concerned and it wasn’t that Gus had never sounded the same way but it hadn’t been enough or at the right time, too soon or too late, but right now, Jed Foster sounded just right and she couldn’t tell him that.

“How’d you know I like Sancerre?” she answered instead. The glass was empty now and she wished there was a place to put it down. She didn’t linger on it though; she sensed she had a lot of wishes just waiting for her to pay attention to them, wishes that could wreak havoc worse than anything Jed had done or said.

“A few months ago, when we went out for Belinda’s birthday, you mentioned it. I remembered,” he said. Belinda’s birthday was six months ago and the bar had been crazy crowded; she’d hardly been able to hear herself speak, let alone anyone else. But Jed had listened. And remembered. What else did he know? What else had she revealed?

“I think I am. Happy,” she said and tried out the smile that wanted to go with the words. It felt good and so did seeing his response.

“Do you want another?” he asked, gesturing at the wineglass. 

“Who’s asking? My fake-boyfriend or Jed?” He hadn’t expected that but she could see he liked it, he’d already said he liked her directness and she couldn’t resist asking.

“Who do you want to be asking, Mary?” Jed pushed back. It could have sounded coy but it didn’t, not at all. She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Fuck it, just me. It’s just me,” he said with his familiar impatience but she understood he was frustrated with himself and not her. That was new.

“Good. The fake-boyfriend was getting a little too rom-com Ryan Reynolds for me,” she retorted and he laughed, amused and relieved, still more nervous than she’d anticipated. 

“I don’t want another,” she said. Let him figure out what he wanted from that. Maybe he could tell her when he did. “But dinner would be good, don’t you think?” He raised an eyebrow then and his mouth turned up in a smile as if he’d won something.

“Not a date, Jesus, just friends, okay? Real Jed, real Mary, no pretending, I don’t care who tries to sit down or make a pass at me,” she said hurriedly. 

“What about Byron, I saw him, he’s had a few drinks I think, liquid courage—I’ll just step aside then, so to speak, if he--”

“No. Fine. If shitty Byron Hale tries a pick-up line on me, you’re my fake-boyfriend again. Otherwise, no. Can we get some dinner now?”

“Of course. Schatzi,” he replied. She sighed heavily and she felt his hand at her lower back again, his fingers against her bare skin, the dress making his choice even more fraught that it was already. “Mary,” he said without anything needing to follow it, beginning enough.


	2. Outtake

If you are the fake-boyfriend, you can’t say that you wished she’d worn the red dress with the short, full skirt but kept those same killer heels, you can’t say you wished to see her one shoulder bare, enough skin unbroken by silky cloth for you to imagine her naked, you can’t say you would have kissed the matching lipstick off her mouth and that you would have kept kissing her until her lips were ever redder, more appealing than the color of the dress you wanted to see slide to the floor, kicked aside by her right foot still in its strappy satin shoe, you can’t say she looks beautiful and like a dream, only “great,” you can’t touch her waist when there’s no one around, because there’s no one around and you want it that way. You can’t say her ex was an idiot, say it, not whisper it, with such conviction that she doesn’t brush it off or laugh, and you can’t say you’re one to talk, an even bigger idiot, who’d rather have a fake memory than none at all, a coward who spent twenty minutes straightening his tie, looking in the mirror and reminding himself he couldn’t decide now was the right time to be brave when it would fuck with her head just before she has to deal with the man who hadn’t loved her enough. You can’t tell the truth but you can’t lie. You can’t say you knew it was a mistake as soon as you made the offer and you can’t say you’d do it again. You can’t admit to having regrets and you don’t, not when she smiles like that and you can still smell the perfume at the base of her throat, when you ask what it’s called and she answers,

“Joy.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Does she know you’re not faking?” Eliza said companionably, as if she’d asked his opinion on taking the boat out tomorrow or whether he thought the plot of Captain American Civil War made sense.

It was a tone he recalled from the first few years of their marriage, when they got along most of the time and when they didn’t, their squabbles were recognizable and easily resolved without still-angry, ultimately dissatisfying make-up sex; it had been a long time since he’d heard it and he couldn’t quite understand how they’d gotten here. He supposed the absolute silence between the two of them for the past year had allowed things to cool down to the point of common civility, but that wasn’t what this was. He could blow her off, that was definitely an option, or mutter “Fuck you, Eliza” and stomp out of the room, but he found he didn’t want to do either. It had been a week full of surprises.

He hadn’t thought Mary would agree when he’d declared, “I need you to be my fake-girlfriend at a thing in a few weeks-- come on, you owe me one. From the conference.” Because she would have been well within her rights to point out she’d not only never asked him to pose as her fake-boyfriend but had actively tried to dissuade him, which would seem to render any idea about her being indebted to him moot. Emma had made a sound that wanted to be a harrumph, but she didn’t have the lower register for it, so it was more a cute snort and Sam had just given him a look that said, “Not cool, man,” and crossed his arms, his body language suggesting Jed was pulling a Byron Hale caliber move. He didn’t disagree with either of them, but he was desperate.

“Seriously, Jed?” she’d asked and it had meant “are you kidding me?” and “here we go again” but also “really? You’re actually serious?” It was one of those days when she’d stuck a pen in her bun, which he had initially thought was a goofy take on some Asian hairdo but which he’d found indicated she was just this side of losing it, juggling discharges and cross-covering a geri case medicine hadn’t cleared properly, waiting for labs to come back on the kiddo who was unstable but whose blood was refusing to clot, and he felt sort of bad for asking. He felt worse imagining going to the dinner alone so he’d answered,

“Seriously, Mary. I need you, I need a fake-girlfriend who isn’t an obvious pity plus-one.”

He had thought there would be more volleys back and forth before she grudgingly agreed, but she’d just closed her eyes for a moment and then said, “When?”

Emma narrowed her eyes then and Jed wondered what she knew. Was she Mary’s confidant or had she gleaned something from what they had each said, what she’d noticed at the conference? He’d given Mary the date and she’d nodded tiredly, adding,

“You going to tell me what this is about? I mean, before I have to show up?”

He’d decided, taking in the Bic in her dark bun, the shadows under her eyes and remembering how she sighed slinging her stethoscope back around her neck like the med-peds intern she’d been for one year but had never left off certain features of, that the details could wait and said as much,

“It’s a family thing. So it’s weird, like family stuff is. Except more, because my family is fucking crazy. Look, I’ll tell you more later, you’re wiped and you have that hernia repair. Let me grab some take-out for dinner and I’ll explain it then. I drove in today, you don’t have to take the T home.”

That had, at least, bought him an approving look from Emma and a half-smile from Sam. Even Mary had brightened a little at the prospect of an easier commute, a hot dinner she didn’t have to prepare even if she ate it in the staff lounge and not on her couch in a fuzzy robe and well-loved Uggs. And it had bought him some time before he had to explain just exactly what he’d invited-slash-commanded her to attend.

He’d expected more of a reaction when he started explaining, but she kept spooning in her pho steadily and he found the lack of interruption made him wish for a drink in a way he hadn’t for years, or at least the idea that a drink would make this easier, the edges softened, the crazy more pastel and less primary colors. Six years of sobriety had mostly rid him of any fantasies about what drugs could do for him and he’d clung to the memory of the abject, sharp misery that had begun before detox and persisted, the overlay of the repulsive, visceral urge to retch and the emotional disgust he felt with himself, enough to make sure he’d never snag the pills in the rattling in the translucent orange bottles half the patients brought in with them. Still, he’d stumbled over “the Foster Foundation, there’s a board and an annual meeting,” and had wished for a neat double Scotch the way he’d longed for a two-wheeler on Christmas Eve when he was seven.

“I don’t get it. Your ex-wife is on the board? Even though you’ve been divorced for like, five years?” Mary had said. Her color was better after eating most of a quart of pho and he thought he should have gotten both tod mun and spring rolls. He wasn’t supposed to have an opinion about it, but he thought she was too thin and worked too hard. He nudged the tod mun towards her and she started dipping the shrimp cakes in peanut sauce and licking the excess from her fingertips in a way that would ordinarily have been extremely distracting. Having to talk about Eliza and his mother was stressful enough it was only very distracting.

“Yeah, well, she and my mother are still close. No one was happy we got divorced except the two of us, so the rest of them kind of ignore it. The past two years, the dinner was so terrible, I would’ve preferred working the ER on a full moon, but short of being a patient in the ICU, I can’t get out of it,” he explained. He hadn’t captured every nuance of the strangeness that was the family foundation meeting, but she’d gotten the jist and hadn’t blurted out, “Sorry, no can do, good luck though.” He’d honestly given it 60-40 odds of going that way from the start.

“Wow. You really know how to sell it,” she replied, fishing around for a tempting morsel in the remaining soup, flashing a smile at him. He wouldn’t tell her everything, but she deserved more.

“They won’t be rude to you, in case you’re worried. Everyone will be exquisitely, WASPily polite and they won’t say anything to you about being there… in any particular capacity. I’ll hear about it afterward, but I’m betting you win over the majority without even trying,” he said. “I mean, Bridget changed the call schedule when you asked and McBurney stopped expecting that crazy morning report when you pushed back.”

“You’re not bringing me to try and get someone to re-write a will, are you? Because I think you’ve overestimated my powers of persuasion,” she answered. He wasn’t, but for once, he thought she was 100% wrong.

“No. I just, I can’t face going and having to deal with Eliza and my mother, the crazy idea that if I just apologize properly, it can all go back to normal. Whatever the fuck they think normal was,” he said.

“So, I’m a symbol? That you can’t go home again, so to speak?” she suggested. “I’m trying to see what you want out of this.”

She’d said the last in a matter-of-fact tone as if it wasn’t the most loaded comment either of them had made, well, ever, about what their relationship was, outside of work. He wasn’t sure either of them were ready for the real answer or if they even knew it. So he said something that was at least partially true.

“More as an ally, someone who hasn’t drunk the family Kool-Aid. If I act like an asshole, I know you’ll call me out on it, but it’ll be for a real reason,” he replied.

“So, I’m going as your fake-girlfriend to remind you about what’s real? Or really important?” she said, half-challenging, half-amused. The meal had reached the stage of skeletal detritus, the empty cartons and plastic tubs scattered on the table-top, cheap chopsticks looking more like random pieces of wood than any tool but Mary seemed sated enough that she wasn’t scurrying to clean it all up. He wished they had cups of green tea in front of them to fiddle with and buoy the conversation.

“That’s more ironically philosophical than I’d considered, but yes. I guess. So also for that, for being smarter than me.”

She laughed, chuckled really, and he realized he’d missed that sound, that it had gotten too rare and he didn’t know why. Perhaps there would be an opportunity at the dinner to discover the reason and the annual meeting would finally, truly be worth it.

“I should mention, it’s black tie,” he added.

“Of course it is,” she said. Against his better judgment, he went on.

“I just, I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, Mary. Or like I didn’t warn you.”

“I got it. You don’t want me to feel under-dressed or belittled at the family gathering you are guilting me into attending with you as your fake-girlfriend if I show up in an Ann Taylor cocktail dress and everyone else is in Carolina Herrera and Mikimoto pearls. I grasp the concept of black tie, Jed. I think, I’m **fairly** confident I can manage to present myself appropriately.”

He wasn’t sure exactly why this particular aspect of the conversation had insulted her, but it clearly had. 

“Yes. You will, you do. I’m trying, badly, to just let you know what to expect. Whose family is like this? I mean, until three years ago, it was white tie and there were engraved invitations. It’s not like we’re actually the Rockefellers,” he said, back-tracking apologetically. It must have been enough because she reached out and covered his hand with her own, making him aware of it more than nearly anything else, reminding him of how it had felt to kiss her neck as if he hadn’t thought about that every day since the conference.

“Poor Jed. Though, I suppose this means you own your own tuxedo, don’t you?” she replied, smiling winsomely as she mocked him; the urge to kiss that smile was nearly overpowering, for its sweetness and the way she kept him off-balance.

“Since I was twelve,” he said which made her squeeze his hand in hers. He might have said something, against his better judgment, as if he had any, but she yawned then and he saw how tired she was and how he needed to get her home and in bed. It would not be his home, nor his bed, not for real or even pretend, but she’d still agreed to go to the foundation meeting and that was enough. He insisted it was enough to himself and he almost believed it.

He had a similar feeling of disbelief when he’d picked her up in her unquestionably unimpressive one bedroom apartment, looking like fucking Helen of Troy in what was definitely haute couture; he’d assumed she and Emma would cobble something together that was unobjectionable and unremarkable, probably black, not especially flattering but suitable for a fake-girlfriend. That was **not** the direction she’d gone, in yards of exquisitely draped silk the color of a black cherry that set off all it left bare—her shoulders and arms, the most tempting décolletage he could not have imagined (and now would never be able to forget) beneath blue scrubs or her crisp button downs on clinic days. She had her hair arranged in some elaborate fashion that showed off her neck and there were opal drops in her ears. He opened his mouth to say something, probably something catastrophic about being madly in love with her but she spoke before he could.

“My gram would say you’ll catch flies with your mouth hanging open like that.” She didn’t look terrifically put out that he hadn’t managed even the most rudimentary compliment or greeting—not yet, anyway. She did look like every fantasy he’d never admitted having and also rather pleased with herself. He hadn’t thought that Mary’s self-satisfied expression would be part of his fantasy, but it turned out it was.

“I’m speechless,” he said, regretting it immediately. 

“Not quite, but it’s good to know it’s possible,” she quipped. “I couldn’t find any Carolina Herrera at Rent-the-Runway, but I thought Versace might do.”

“It’s—you’re,” he paused, taking a breath and trying to remember what was real. “You look beautiful, so beautiful, I hadn’t imagined--” he broke off. The last part was a mistake, even though it was true, and he knew that she knew it too; he had thought about her, but not looking like this and it shouldn’t make any difference but somehow it did. She would have wanted it to make some difference, otherwise she would have picked out something boring and black and background, instead of a dress that made it eminently clear she expected attention to be paid to her and just what sort of attention it should be.

“I thought the best defense is a good offense, right? Though I talked Emma out of the scarlet Narcisco Rodriguez number with the cut-outs. It might read a little…tawdry without the right accessories,” she said. “Red’s tricky that way.”

He couldn’t exactly thank her for not giving him an MI on her doorstep in the potentially tawdry dress and he sensed the ruin of the evening if he gave her another sentimental compliment.

“Opals are unlucky,” he blurted out. She’d evidently decided that despite his consummate, endless lame-ness, she was still going with him and pulled the door shut behind her, taking a step closer to him. Not close enough to breach the boundary of friends but still, a step nearer.

“Not if they’re your birthstone. And besides, we are actually doctors, who believe in science. That part’s not pretend, Jed,” she said. Something about what she said, more than anything he had come up with appeared to unsettle her; there was the faintest hint of apprehension in her voice when she spoke again.

“I have elbow gloves in my bag…if you think I’ll need them. I thought it was starting to look a little too Pretty Woman, but I figured I’d better be prepared.” Oh, she was a Girl Scout, wasn’t she, as well as a knock-out and the best pediatric surgeon he’d ever met—and at least for tonight, she was some kind of his girlfriend.

He’d thought someone would take him aside within 10 minutes of arriving, probably Ezra or maybe his cousin Cardie (properly Virginia-Cardwell, which was what everyone over 55 called her), and confront him on the complete inconceivability of Mary being his real girlfriend and winkle out the truth, but there’d been nothing of the sort. Just polite acceptance as if there was nothing untoward about black sheep Jed announcing a stunning brunette surgeon was his better half or frank enthusiasm, from Ez and Cardie and even Aunt Tess, who had always reminded him of Bridget Brannan on 6 Green (or rather vice versa, except that he saw Bridget nearly every day and Aunt Tess at this dinner and the off-year Christmas he made it to in Baltimore) over Mary who was like the fucking Meryl Streep of the fake-girlfriend act. If he was half as clever as he pretended to be (forget about half as clever as Mary), he would have prepared a little Oscar statuette for her as a gag gift; if he had it, he’d wonder about whether it was right to give it to her, funny or ungrateful or inadequate.

He thought Mary might, just might, flag a little under the withering glance his mother bestowed upon them both but unlike him, she was made of sterner stuff. The mean streets of Manchester, New Hampshire must have actually been mean or maybe it was only that Jed was weak and susceptible to his mother’s liquid nitrogen affect. Mary noticed and grew appreciably warmer, taking his hand in her own, letting a fond smile play around her mouth, fiddling with the full skirt of her gown so little eddies of her scent, expensive perfume and lovely woman, reached him. He smiled then and both women saw; Mary was a gracious winner and excused herself on a pretext they all recognized, walking somewhere to get something, providing Jed a glimpse of her retreating stride, familiar from the hospital hallways though modulated now by the heels she wore and the gown billowing around her as elegantly as her white coat always did.

“Try not to ruin this one, Jedediah. I can’t think how you managed it, God knows, with your track record,” his mother had said, not bothering to hiss or even add any particular iciness to her tone. He was glad for Mary’s sake that she was talking to Ezra and his wife Allison instead of hearing his mother but he selfishly wished she’d been beside him to intercede. 

“Helpful advice as always, mother,” he’d said evenly, catching sight of Mary who was watching him with a thoughtful expression. She took a sip from the glass she held, a gesture that beckoned but he only nodded slightly, letting her know he was all right, he’d be along in a while.

“You might try following it,” his mother remarked. “I’m glad your father never had to see what you’ve done with your life.” He’d been prepared for something like that but it still hurt sharply and now he was glad Mary was across the room, not privy to just how toxic his mother could be, how little she loved him. There was a cutting rejoinder to be made, Jed could feel the words in his mouth but he couldn’t say them, because then he would have said them and he didn’t want to be that person, couldn’t be that man and also the man Mary expected to join her. While he considered it, his mother gave him a last look, one that said just how pitifully wanting she found him, then stalked off in a swirl of vintage Givenchy chiffon and lace.

And that was where Eliza had found him, gazing at Mary who was entirely occupied now by a conversation with Cardie and her husband Nick, clearly enjoying herself based on the angle of her chin, her posture relaxed, her drink forgotten on a table. From a distance, he could pretend that it was real, that she would smile into a kiss that missed her cheek and caught the corner of her mouth, his hand appreciative and not possessive on her waist, that she would tease him for dawdling or lolly-gagging or some other silly word that meant she loved him unabashedly. Devotedly. Giddily. So, basically, all the ways he knew he loved her but had been too chicken-shit to tell her. Now he had to wonder, based on what Eliza said, did she already know? And if she did, what should he do?

“I don’t know,” he said. He’d had an attending during med school, psych or neuro, he couldn’t recall exactly, other than he’d worn a bow-tie and hadn’t been a pediatrician, who’d told them to practice saying it in front of a mirror so it would be easy when a patient or patient’s family asked them a question they couldn’t answer. Jed had ignored the advice, already committed to surgery, but it might have helped. He’d found himself in myriad situations where he really didn’t know what to say, what was true or right. He’d avoided the admission so often Eliza was taken aback, laughed aloud.

“You **have** changed. To think, Jed Foster willing to say he doesn’t have the answer. If you’d figured that out a few years ago, we might still be married.”

She smelled the same, some citrusy Jo Malone perfume, and she wore another dress that gave the overall impression of Gwyneth Paltrow, sleek and pale but not bridal; he didn’t need to look at her to know how artfully she stood beside him. Her tone was different though, less challenging, more speculative, a woman he could actually talk to.

“No, we wouldn’t. Nothing was going to save that marriage, you and I both know it. But, it’s nice to say, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she replied. “Or to have said it and find out we’re not swearing at each other. So, your…friend, Dr. Phinney, what’re you going to do about that? About her? It perhaps wasn’t the wisest choice to bring her here, no?”

“Probably not. But, my mother would remind you, I’m not known for making wise choices. The opposite actually,” he said.

“You know your mother is a fucking battle-axe, right? I mean, I can say that now that she’s not my mother-in-law and we’re just on the board together. Don’t listen to her.”

“Ah, now you’ve got my back?”

“Better late than never,” Eliza said. Sassed was more like it but it didn’t fit the venue, the silvery blue satin she wore to suggest it matched her eyes. They were dark grey but the dress was persuasive. “Jed. I know you didn’t ask my opinion and God knows I’m the last one to have an opinion about your love life, but, you’re… you’re not a liar. And you’re a shitty actor. You can barely play Charades.”

“Is this going somewhere? Besides a weird litany of my many shortcomings, which no longer affect you?” 

“Tell her the truth. Find out the truth,” she said gently, firmly, a faint echo of how Mary could sound.

“Gee, thanks, Fox Mulder,” he replied, to help them regain their balance. She made a sound too pretty to be a snort but conveying the same message and then they were quiet a minute. He could hear the band (he’d waited until the car to tell Mary about the band and how it wasn’t a trio because that hadn’t cut it with his mother) starting to tune up, the clarinet showing off.

“She’s waiting for you,” Eliza said. There was something she didn’t say, he could feel it, but he respected her enough now to not press her. Another time maybe he could ask her, another evening like this but not quite like this. He felt her hand at his elbow, a final caress, a prod.

Mary was alone when he found her, looking out one of the tall windows at the terrace, the manicured gardens beyond less pristine in the moonlight; it was charming in the summer but too cold tonight for a rendezvous. He was prepared to watch the night with her while the band started playing but she turned to face him right away.

“Took you a while,” she said.

“Too long?” He wasn’t sure who the question was for. She shrugged and Jed was aware of her again in that first, stunning way; her shoulders were not bare, they were naked, and he felt the shape of her body in the palms of his hands, her full breasts and slender waist, the female curve of her thigh and the steampunk brilliance of her ankles beneath the lustrous silk as if he touched her. 

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to come back, I didn’t want to interrupt,” she replied. He wanted both, what he’d had and what she suggested, how he would have been ashamed to have her hear his mother and yet consoled by her expected contradiction, the righteous advocacy he’d seen her deploy for so many patients but this time, to be its basking object. “And your cousin Cardie got this look in her eye, like she might suspect…”

“Suspect?” he repeated.

“That we’re not, that we are misrepresenting our relationship,” she said, truly uncertain for the first time. 

“That it’s fake?” What exactly troubled her now, he couldn’t say. He heard Eliza’s voice _Find out the truth_ and he saw the delicate curve of Mary’s cheek, the way the opal earring accentuated the line of her neck and he felt the devil take him like the eager fire in the milky stone.

“Mm. Yes. I covered as well as I could,” she said.

“But perhaps we should put any suspicions to rest. Cardie’s an awful snoop. Too many episodes of the Bloodhound Gang,” he remarked, enjoying her sudden smile.

“I remember that show, ‘Whenever there’s trouble, we’re there on the double,’” she said, humming, then paused. “Are you considering a diversion or something else?”

“A kiss. That should convince her,” he said as matter-of-factly as he could, as if it were a line item on the surgery department’s budget.

“I suppose it would.” Was that agreement? Acceptance? She’d been carefully oblique and he thought again how intelligent she was, how much better at this she’d been than he had at the conference.

“You haven’t said yes, Mary.” Fake or not, he wouldn’t take a second time what he had not been granted permission for before, her pulse under his lips, the memory of her hastily swallowed gasp.

“No,” she said and he prepared to step back. “I haven’t…Yes.”

It crossed his mind he should check to see they were visible, if not to Cardie, than to someone; the kiss unwitnessed had no point or rather, a point they hadn’t been willing to declare. It crossed his mind and he ignored it because he wanted to feel her smile against his mouth, feel the way her lips parted when he tasted her. He’d laid a hand against her cheek with the last sibilance of her _yes_ and he’d expected to feel he was drawing her to him but he was wrong; she arched into his touch immediately and his other hand was at her waist of its own accord, pressing her to him unnecessarily.

His mind tried to think, to consider if she could be pretending or if she was only using him to slake the hunger for another man, but the thoughts fell away, scattered like September petals, like a deck of cards falling out of their neat sine wave. There was only the sensation of her warmth and his desire, ratcheting up ferociously, the urge to keep kissing her sweet mouth battling with the yearning for her neck, the allure of her suprasternal notch and the shadow nestled between her breasts. She was wonderfully assertive, stroking his tongue with her own, suckling at his lower lip and winding her arms around his neck. He felt her hand at the back of his head, the nape of his neck and thanked God she had not worn the gloves, that it was her bare fingertips tracing down to his collar, the angle of his jaw beneath his beard. She moaned a little into his mouth, the softest sound, and he felt himself get hard and couldn’t resist pulling her closer as he broke the kiss, hid his face in her neck, panting.

“No? Too convincing?” she asked. He couldn’t have said how loud she was, she was so close and his heart was pounding. One of her hands was at his shoulder now, relaxed, its own intimacy.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Mary. It’s a family party. We were almost…we crossed the line,” he muttered. He liked how it felt to talk into her ear, his breath on her skin and how she shivered with it in his arms, but he felt wild, hurtling towards a future he couldn’t make out.

“Which one?” He half-expected Cardie to pop up and announce they should get a room, already, a cosmic slap-down, but they were still alone, his relatives at a miraculous distance.

“All of them.” None of this was helping his erection in the slightest and it was only because there were yards of silk between them that she couldn’t appreciate it. 

“Oh, not all. Enough, maybe,” she said, still Mary but using provocative, tender tone he’d not imagined she possessed. Or that she would ever use with him. He felt half-drunk, the good half, but he didn’t think he’d figured out an answer to his question. He was quiet and her words hung in the air between them, altering as they lingered like the undulation of smoke.

“Or too many. I’m sorry,” she said, starting to pull back. He tightened his hold on her and rubbed his cheek against her throat, calming himself down, trying to soothe her.

“Please, don’t,” he said and she was still.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t go away. Stay,” he asked. She leaned into him again and he exhaled slowly. It seemed like he had always held her.

“Can you believe Eliza told me to do this?” he added reflectively, startling them both, himself with the admission, Mary with the invocation of another woman, the ex she was meant to impress and show up with her poise and her dark beauty. He felt Mary tense up and the consequent impulse to pet her, wherever he could reach, an impulse he repressed.

“What?” 

“Sorry, that came out wrong. Eliza said I should tell you the truth,” he explained. It was good advice, he knew that, but he hadn’t quite followed it.

“The truth?” Mary said flatly, her affectionate humor dissipated. “Does that have much to do with tonight?”

“I want it to. Between us. I thought I knew what the fuck I was doing, I could keep it all straight,” he said. He shifted so he could see her face. Her brow was furrowed the way it would during a difficult surgery, her mouth rosy from his kisses but frowning. He wouldn’t let his mother be right. “I don’t want to pretend anymore. Not with you. Mary, I don’t give a fuck about the rest of them, or any of this. What I care about, when I kissed you—that wasn’t fake for me.”

“Are you sure?” The doubt unsettled him and he recognized the temptation to argue and defend himself, an end to all his hopes.

“Yes. I am. I have been. It’s you I haven’t been sure of, whether you’d laugh or slap me or give me one of those pitying looks before a just-friends speech,” he replied.

“‘Slap you?’ Did you think we were in a movie from 1937?” she said but she looked less dismayed. “I would’ve thought you could tell what I…but, after tonight, this whole thing, I can at least understand why you’re weird about relationships. So, no fake-girlfriend, no fake-boyfriend, just all real?” 

“Speaking for myself, yes. You, if you’re not going to smack me, maybe you could… oh, I don’t know, enlighten me? It turns out I’m complete moron.”

“I ought to let you twist…but you’ll probably come up with some other crazy stunt and I’m maxed out. If you want things to work with us, you might space out the insanity a little more,” she said. She was trying to look serious but her dimples betrayed her.

“That’s a yes?” He was a lucky sonovabitch or she was the kindest woman to walk the face of the earth, maybe both.

“The band’s playing ‘These Foolish Things.’ Let’s dance and I’ll tell you then,” she said. He swept her into a foxtrot and finally appreciated the ballroom lessons Eliza had forced on him before the wedding. Nothing would make him appreciate the years of cotillion. Jed thought she would make him wait until the song ended but after the second verse, she whispered in his ear,

“Yes. I’m tired of pretending to love you when I do. Already. For so long--when I’m **in** love with you. Can our next date be something normal, like going to the movies? Or even mini-golf? I mean, as nice as this is, I’m up for something more low-key. Without heels.”

He laughed and kissed her cheek, purely happy. Cardie saw him, winked, and mouthed “Nice save, Ace.” She’d probably guessed the whole thing but telling Mary that could wait.

“Yes, of course. I’ve been told I give a killer foot massage. And just to be clear, I’m in love with you too.” The look she gave him was better than a kiss but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t challenge that assumption later, on the way home, at her door, and every day after.


	4. Outtake

When you are the fake-girlfriend, you waffle—about actions you wouldn’t think about twice if it were real, about words you know could be misconstrued, gestures that will mean something to you, maybe everything, and to him, well, you can’t even ask. You feel like you did at 12, at 16, 21, vulnerable and doubtful and completely determined that he not know it, the possible discovery worse than anything you can imagine. You wonder what makes him ask when he had seemed tired of pretending, remember him before you try to go to sleep, you think about his dark eyes and why he wants to keep secrets. You hope for the expression on his face when he sees you in the red dress and you wish you could tell your friend about how the heels pinch, laugh over the strangling tightness of the Spanx and the strapless bra, but he’s not your friend now and he doesn’t want the spell broken. You understand him more as he understands you less and you’re sorry you said yes though you say it again and again. You feel like a fraud but that’s what he asked you to be and being in love with him means giving him what he wants tonight even if he won’t want it tomorrow. You look out into the night and wonder what’s concealed in the moonless shadows, if truth can hide in a lie and if it does, whether the deception ever ends; there are still shadows at high noon. When you close your eyes, he’s in love with you and you catch your breath when he breaks off the kiss. There isn’t time to enjoy the taste of him, to be hungry for him again, to be overwhelmed, you have to say something; finally, you have to say no. You have to play at making it a question, and you have to wait to see who answers you.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a post on Tumblr about always being ready to read a fake-dating AU and I thought, wow, that's exactly what our fandom is missing :) Not quite, but it was fun to imagine some scenarios. The title is miraculously still from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
